Mojospun

Yesterday was a fun day. Brad brought Sherlock out for lunch so that we could take a walk along our wonderful nature trails near my workplace. There is a beautiful salmon creek there that goes for miles, and the areas around it have been preserved as wetlands. It makes for a gorgeous trek filled with all sorts of trees, plants, animals and other walkers. In the fall I can stand on one of the three little bridges that occasionally cross the creek and watch thousands of salmon racing towards nature.

Sherlock was pretty funny. I carried him mostly, but when I put him down he looked like a little bunny rabbit. He got confused once and started following someone else. Down at the little duck pond we saw several male mallards and then suddenly realized that, not four feet in front of us, there was a female. Her coloring blended so well into the bank of the pond she was practically invisible. As we were talking about how amazing this was, one of the rocks near her started moving. This "rock" turned out to be one of seven ducklings, so cute with their fuzzy brown fluff, heads tucked under their wings. Nature does great stuff. (Does the term "human nature" ever seem like an oxymoron to anyone else?) I wish I had taken my camera along!

I am about halfway through my second bobbin of MojoSpun, which is what I'm calling the yarn produced by my mohair/wool roving from the Barefoot Spinner. I should be able to finish it and ply tomorrow, as I've got a hot date with a handsome dude and can't work on it tonight. Sodo Mojo is the catch phrase for the Seattle Mariners, who have been the background for my spinning lately. Don't ask me how they did against the Yankees last night.

In a serendipitous turn of fate, I realize that MojoSpun will coordinate beautifully with the Chasing Rainbows "Opal" silk and silk/merino purchased at the Seattle Fiber Arts Expo last month.

My knitting friend Karen's high school drama club (Karen is the Drama Teacher, along with being an English teacher-- her patience must be endless) is presenting a play that we are excited about attending tonight and tomorrow (two parts). I loved being in my high school musical productions. Whenever I have a cold, I always remember "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls:

The average American female, basically insecure
develops a certain tendency to react
with psychosomatic symptoms, difficult to endure
affecting the upper respiratory tract.

In other words, just from waitin' around for that plain little band of gold
a person can develop a cold
You can feed her all day with the Vitamin A and the bromide fizz
But the medicine never gets anywhere near where the hurtin' is
Soon she's getting a kind of a name for herself but the name ain't his-
A person can develop a cold.

In other news, Sherah is now through with her year at WSU and is back in my area, which is pretty cool. Just in time for Mother's Day!

Oh, and the leopard skin jacket kit has a buyer, but Spanish Combs is yet available.

What's the Madder?

I love learning new stuff. From Companion Plants I learn more about Madder.

Rubia Tinctoria (Madder):

One of the more important dye plants. Depending on the mordant used, the roots will yield dyes of red, pink, lilac, purple, rose, orange, brown or black. A spreading plant, this is a relative of Lady's Bedstraw and Sweet Woodruff. Traditionally used to dye wood in fine violins.

Maybe that's why some violins can be played furiously.

Rubia Cordifolia (Indian Madder)

Source of the maroon robe dye used by Tibetan monks. The leaves are used to stop hemorrhaging. Attractive reddish growing tips and a sprawling habit make this a good hanging basket plant.

One imagines that one might need to be careful. The leaves are used to stop red stuff from being produced but the stems (?) are used to produce red stuff.

Fascinating. I was looking for madder because Ryan couldn't find any for their dye garden.

Remedies

I came home early from work after going by the doc's office for the usual "you are sick" diagnosis. I figured a good remedy would be to stop by Weaving Works on the way home.

While there, I met a lovely lady as we were both wandering through roving. She needed to be talked into buying the merino/tussah silk blend, and I needed to be pushed just a bit on the brown blue-faced leicester that ran like satin through my fingers. We both accomplished our tasks quite well. Here's the balm, a beautiful lot of shiny blue-faced roving:

Also, while at Caroline's house perusing the library at Lady Fiddletwist's Knitting Porch, I was convinced that Folk Vests should join the tomes in Mme Glitchbane's library. It leapt into my arms today. And then the Nancy Wiseman finishing techniques book caught my eye, so it came with me as well.

My newfound friend turns out to be a weaver and a spinner, and dyes a lot of her own fiber. After a great conversation, I picked up a little bag of dead animals to use in my own dyeing experiments (which I hope will be assisted by the Lady Lo). Oh all right, it is cochineal, but I didn't have a clue until today that cochineal are little tick-like varmints that cling to the side of cactus, did you? Along with the cochineal, I learned that I would need alum and cream of tartar.

Ermadine looked over my shoulder and told me I was spending too much money. She's right; I'm going to have to go on a spending diet. I'm also planning to recoup some of my recent expenditures by selling off some Stash. The Kaffe Fassett Spanish Combs kit and the Kaffe Fassett Leopard Skin Jacket kit, both with totally original Rowan yarns, will either be sold to someone who offers me a great price (hint, hint), or will go on eBay very soon. I love those designs, but practically speaking will never get around to knitting them. I'll be lucky to get Long Leaf Coat done, but it will get done at some point.

Someone asked me at MS&W about the Coat. She said that's why she read my blog, because of the coat. Well, didn't I feel like a heel! But frankly, so many negative things happened in my life around the time I was knitting the Coat, I needed to put it away until I can knit on it happily, the way it was meant to be. I'm getting there, but it's still not time. I'm going to keep monkeying around with other stuff first.

Here's the winning swatch for the Dancing Leaf handpainted yarn.

Ginger approves.

The Triple Crown

I think I've got it figured out, where I went wrong. One must think of the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival as an Event. To believe that you can simply pack up one day and go to this place far away and participate in activities, walk around endlessly, and take in all manner of fibercandy without proper preparation and then hope to have no lingering ill effects is nonsense.

I'm sorry I can't blame consumption of massive quantities of martinis or The Earl (of Lagavulin) or even my personal concoction, the fabulous "Irish Painkiller" at MS&W, or any ensuing antics produced by the influence thereof. Caroline and I shared a wonderful bottle of wine over two nights, but I needed all my energy for the actual walking about and loot-lugging-- and I really do try to act more mature than my children most of the time! Which brings me to my point:

One must train for the Wool Festival Triple Crown:

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival - near Baltimore, Maryland, in May
Black Sheep Gathering - Eugene, Oregon, in June
The Wool Festival at Taos - Taos, New Mexico, in October

As Vanessa says, "only 362 more days until MS&W!" But only 44 days until the Black Sheep Gathering! My sister lives in Oregon, so Black Sheep will be a piece of cake (but I wish we could get Caroline over to this coast!)

It seems that spinning is becoming the new fiber fad, which is just fine with me-- I'll do the best I can to perpetuate it! And where better to stock up on spinning info and supplies than the Domains of the Triple Crown?!?

Okay, I'm getting off-track. And who wouldn't, if they had just finished frogging three inches of a reindeer sweater? They were getting uglier by the minute, and needed a complete amputation and regeneration.

I've also been swatching my wonderful silk and wool, and have come up with the stitch I will use for my jacket. Using a yarn that knits stockinette at 5 stitches to an inch, this stitch requires 9 stitches to achieve one inch in width, but it shows off the handpaint yarn exquisitely and will require no blocking.

And now it's late at night, my sweetheart has hurried off to the hospital to attend to his parents, the full story not quite available, but everything seems to be all right, something about a rather funny freak accident. So I'll quit picking at my nail polish, take some more Nyquil and try to cope with tomorrow when it arrives.

News of Now

Head pounds, tummy frowns,
muscles scream, lungs wheeze,
sinus drains, neck complains,
eyes close in sleepy doze,
I sing the blues and thats the News
of Now in Happy Holler.

Ok, so did I read my book on the trip? No.
Did I knit the Varg Pojken sleeves? No.
I sadistically cast on 80 stitches on size 0's and knit 2/3 of a sock, thus:

While waiting for my baggage in Seattle, a woman (I'll call her AL for Airport Lady) asked me about the sock, and for whom was I knitting it? I didn't know. She then told me about her friend (Airport Lady's Friend, ALF) who moved to Greenland with her husband (the ALF's husband, not AL's). ALF is a music teacher, but now finds herself following hunters of muskox around in Greenland, saving the hides and freezing them. Then she defrosts them and processes the wool, and has knit her son a vest from it. I told AL how much quiviut costs in skein form in the US and she was floored! (I've never seen it for under $45 a skein, and mostly $60). Interesting conversation at the baggage claim. Apparently ALF recently had her husband stop the car so that she could skin a red fox that had been the victim of a hit and run.

Speaking of Varg Pojken, there was one on exhibit in the hall where winning items are exhibited. It was knit, it appeared, in the same yarn and colors as mine. There were no ridges, of course, but I was glad to see that, although it looked perfect from any reasonable distance, up close there are little pulls of yarn where the design is on a diagonal. I don't know how this can be avoided in stranded techniques; I can't seem to avoid it myself but I'm hardly an expert.

I met other folks at MS&W that I didn't have time to mention yesterday. Carolyn, of GirlReaction and Leigh, our Wool Flowers gal were among them. Carolyn has great pictures of Chloe on her blog. Also, Pam from LA was there, it was really good to see her and I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of such a nice person.

Our mystery person wearing Kilim is Michelle from Another Knitting Blog, most folks agree. Michelle, if this is wrong, yell! And the Kilim may be Philosophers Wool Kilim, not KF Kilim. Geez, Glitchbane, get it right!

I was so glad to see all my critters when I got home. Brad said that each day at 5:30 (the time I normally return from work), they all assembled at the top of the stairs to wait for me. awwwww, man..... the guilt! the guilt! I don't know if I can handle it! But their love is so unconditional, isn't it?

I'm B-a-a-ck!

Ezra and I were a match made in Heaven, and Heaven was the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2003. But more about him later...

The Welcome

I arrived at the Baltimore airport Friday evening, and was greeted by the sweetest little girl on the planet, Miss Emily:

Oh, her mom, the very wonderful Caroline F, was there too! I handed Miss E a little Space Needle t-shirt I brought for her, and she paid me the utmost compliment of immediately attempting to put it on herself. What a little sweetheart; she suffered through the whole day at MS&W with nary a complaint. At home she was an entertaining hostess, making sure that I had plenty of toys to play with and helping me to get ready for the festival. It's so obvious that Caroline and Emily were meant for each other!

The People

We arrived at the festival on Saturday morning not long before it was time to meet with the various online personalities whose acquaintance we have collected over the past year and a half. We had arranged to meet at the booth of The Barefoot Spinner. This vendor is Maureen Prichard, a delightful woman who has wonderful roving for sale and is a friend of Louise's. I am so crestfallen to realize that I did not get a photo of Louise and Chloe!

After a long trip from France, Louise looked impossibly like a fresh bundle of energy-- a friendly, intelligent face surrounded by black curly hair and punctuated with big brown eyes. Chloe and Emily had some toddler-level discussions to which the adults were not privy, and later in the day Chloe entertained Emily by putting on a sheep mask and practicing her vocabulary of "Baa-a-a"'s. Emily was suitably impressed.

I didn't get pictures of everyone that day. It was a crazy melange of excitement and yarn talk. An introduction would be made, invariably followed by a repetition of the first name and then a guess of the last name. It seemed like a sort of code. For example, a person would introduce herself thusly: "Hi, I'm Tina". and I would reply "Tina... Ramey? From Houston?!" And she would seal the code exchange with "yes! that's me!" It was a great game, and whether we guessed right or not, it was wonderful to put names with faces and to see some of the sweaters in person that we have heard about when they were being knit. Here's Tina, wearing her Inishmore, saying "Hi, I'm Tina!":

And here is Laura, the sock poetess, in a Rowan cardigan. I've always thought of Laura as a very nice person whom I'd love to meet, and I was not the slightest bit wrong. But I forgot to ask her which of her socks she was wearing!

Speaking of wonderful people, I had the extreme pleasure of meeting Marcia G, one of my favorite posters on FiberTraditions. I think I'd love to be her next-door neighbor; she has a way of making the world seem calm and well-paced, and her innate sense of knitting is transferred by her in that same unhurried but complete and pleasant way. I was happy to see that she succumbed to the pull of the Golding spindle later in the day, and can't wait to hear how she likes using it!

Now here's someone I don't know that well, but I've been so blown away by her knowledge of the English language and linguistics that I was glad to have an opportunity to meet her. I loved her t-shirt too, showing the Bad Kitten club logo. It's Karen, from California:

Pam from Pennsylvania was a treasure of knitting examples! In the foreground of this picutre she is wearing a gorgeous Dale of Norway cardigan (didn't catch the design name), while in the background we have another friend (aack, brain cannot remember name, help!!) wearing Kilim by Kaffe Fassett:

And here Pam shows us the gorgeous Luckenbooth she is working on. We'll just call her Pam the Enabler, shall we? Because that one is going on my to-do list pronto!

And while we're in the category of Women and Their WIP's, here's the very fun Nancy Donahue with a sweater she is knitting for her niece in self-striping yarn. Wild, huh!!?

Now THIS is the picture that should have been in The Scottish Collection for Catriona, don't you think? It's my lovely hostess, Caroline, who is also carrying the Tote Around from KnitKits that she completed last week from bulky Lopi. I should have counted the compliments she got on both items, I'm sure they were in the triple digits.

Jennifer, a lucky local, was sporting this beautiful Ron Schweitzer-designed vest:

I was surprised when Laurel introduced herself-- I did not recognize her because she is so much lovelier in person than in any photo I have seen of her. Unfortunately, my camera could not capture the true Laurel, either! But here she is modeling Fern, just finished on the airplane over from California.

[photo removed]

Ah! Here's our sweetheart Vanessa, saying "hi!" What a fun time we had hanging out with her! I want her to be my other next-door neighbor. I wish I had taken a picture of the Nantucket Basket she was carrying. Not only can this gal knit, but if her basket is any indication, anything she touches is exquisite.

And here's another Caroline (I think it's Caroline L ?) waving to us all:

The Loot

Oh, the wonderful wares that were there! I looked longingly at the Golding spindles and then convinced myself that I could buy those later; I wanted to find the Unfindable, the Unique and Wonderful. And here's what I came up with.

Remember the Chasing Rainbows silk and silk/merino I got at the Seattle Fiber Arts Expo? I love it so much, and found some there at MS&W. The middle hank is pure Tussah Silk, the outer ones are 50/50 silk and merino, and the one on the bottom of it all is a mixture of alpaca, silk and merino from a different vendor.

And from The Barefoot Spinner comes two of these huge balls of wool/mohair from Maureen's sheep. Sherlock and Ginger are trying to decide whether they can get away with using it for play!

My good friend Vanessa opened my eyes to the Dancing Leaf Farm "Soft & Shiny" Mohair/Wool and the Lil' Loop Mohair Yarn, hand-dyed and irresistably gorgeous. I think I will try to make one of the Jean Frost jackets from this, and make the cuffs and collar with the boucle.

I can't decide which is my most favorite purchase! But this one spoke to me from the moment I saw it. In fact, I walked away from it the first time, and then had to find it again. It is the "Mother Marion's Magnificent Spinning Machine", a supported spindle hand made by a man in the Ozarks. It works like a Great Wheel (I had to be educated on what that meant, by the way) in that you spin off the end of the spindle, letting the fiber go plunk, plunk, plunk against the the sharp point. It sits on the floor and you spin the wheel with your bare foot, while holding the fiber at an angle to the spindle and every once in a while winding it down and back up the shaft of the spindle. Very, very cool.

And the triumph of my trip: Ezra. I couldn't bring Ezra back with me, but he gave me his coat, all nine pounds of glorious, shiny steel-grey Romney. I think he reminded me of Brad! The fleece is beautiful, and loaded with lanolin. Sam said two words when I told her about it: Scouring Party!!!

Abbysinia

I just realized exactly how early I will have to arise tomorrow in order to make it to the airport 2 hours prior to a 7:30 a.m. flight. It won't be pretty. Depending on how I feel when I get back I'll either a) post entries so frequently you'll get sick of them or b) not post for as long as it takes to recover from the trip and the sheep-induced stupor.

I'm planning to start the Reindeer sleeves while gone; I'm not crazy enough to think I can concentrate on the rest of the reindeer themselves while away from home. To tell you the truth (which you might not need to know, but what the hey) I feel like I'm entering a huge slump where I really don't want to do anything or see anyone or go to work or knit. I tried to get past it this last week by staying home (except for work), knitting as much as possible and writing blog entries every day as if they will keep me from being sucked into the Dark Side. If I'm lucky my experiences at MS&W will shake me out of it and were it not for this telltale entry, you would never know.

I need some exercise, don't I? And puppies come in handy, because they have a way of refusing to be ignored. :-)

As they say in Africa: Abbysinia

M'Aidez! MayDay!

Here is my May Basket. I've traded in the bloom of youth for the catharsis of the Cosmopolitan. A spree of sheepy shopping shall replace a sally 'round the maypole, and the serendipity of Spring will not be compromised. M'aidez!

The reindeer are progressing but I am too lazy to arrange a photo. The fees they are starting to charge are becoming unreasonable, pheh! There are 12 of them, you see, and each thinks he is more attractive than the next. I've named them after the months of the year, in French. They vie for the spotlight; the resulting din is much too annoying for a person of my years ( and they haven't even got their heads on yet). M'aidez!

I'm hoping the "ridges" block out when I'm finished. These occur where a color change appears at the same place for several rows, and are especially prominent on Juin, Juillet, Janvier et Decembre, the four which are next to the side "seams". If I weren't the lazy person I am, I would remedy this by pretending this is intarsia and twisting my yarns at different intervals on the other side of the change. Every so often I yank and pull at the knitted fabric and convince myself that once its washed and stretched on the woolly board it will be fine.

I finally received my cone of soft blue cashmere/silk laceweight that I won on eBay three weeks ago. The Seller, Nandia Cashmere, advertises that they ship via priority mail "within 4 days of the end of auction". This has not been the case in my experience and although the yarn is very nice and the price is wonderful I probably won't buy anything more from them. My dwindling bank account will appreciate that!

What am I going to do with a cone of Alice Blue Gown laceweight? Perhaps after the mourning shawl is done and I am once again in the mood for a large lace project I'll endeavor to do a full-scale, enormous lacy shawl to wrap myself in in the unlikely event that I'll ever be outdoors enjoying a garden party on a balmy midsummer's eve where the light weight of a cashmere wrap would be as perfect for the night as dark chocolate for strawberries.

Madame Glitchbane has been working on another little contraption, That Which Calculates The Prescription For Increasing. It is always annoying when I reach the part of a pattern that tells me to "increase x number of stitches evenly over the next round." It's not that I am bad at math, for I am not. It is not that I dislike math, for I do not. I simply like to choose the time and circumstance under which I perform the miracle of numbers, and 99 times out of 100 my wild urge to calculate does not simultaneously occur with an increase round in knitting. So I have implored the good Madame to provide me with a Remedy for my Ailment, and we shall see what she comes up with.

To illustrate my point about enjoying math: In the early years of my existence in the Emerald Rain Forest I often thought that I would move somewhere else. The reasons I came here had dissolved (I decided that I didn't, after all, wish to be a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines), and I longed for sunshine and southern hospitality. The PNW folks are nice enough, but they seemed at the time to be interesting creatures given more to the pursuit of individual interests (hiking, biking, running, kayaking, etc) than to those of a more comraderic and less athletic nature. I had not yet discovered the fiberocity within the area.

So I bought myself a copy of the Places Rated Almanac and got to work. The PRA rates the 300 largest cities in the U.S. based on a number of factors, including weather, economy, crime, sports, education and others. I weighted each of these factors according to how important they were to me, and weighted them further by how close the city was to my children. I multipled everything out, added up the totals and compared. The winner? Knoxville, Tennessee. I would be living there today, except for a certain marriage proposal that I accepted. I still dream of living in Knoxville; I worked so hard (at a time of my own choosing) to calculate its correctness for me!

And I feel certain that balmy summer evenings in Knoxville would be perfect for the Alice-Blue shawl.